of fine lines and broken things
by Aneta
Summary: Kensi's past comes back to haunt her in ways she never imagined. UPDATED: December 21, 2010.
1. Chapter One

**Reposted: December 7, 2010.**

**Disclaimer:I own none of the characters. They all belongs to CBS, I promise.**

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_She wakes up cold and alone. And these rooms are never more silent than in the seconds right before they disappear._

**xxx**

The droning hum of the refrigerator fights its way into her thoughts as the screeching of tires outside her apartment complex causes her weary mind to stir. Flashing lights from the TV before her, and two missed calls on her cell phone from a drunken Eric tell her that it is very late, and the team had bonding night without her. She finds that she cannot really bring herself to care too much on either point.

**xxx**

_Mirrors that are foggy and water that is never hot enough to burn away the sickly scars resting on your fingertips._

**xxx**

Caught in the final scenes of a dream that had something to do with postcards and dishtowels. Shaking her head and stretching her arms because there as some things –like that- that she will never even attempt to make sense of no matter what time of the day. So she thinks about coffee and laundry instead, and turns on all the lights as she moves around the quiet room.

**xxx**

_"He would've been proud of you." And Nate is shifting and somber, and she smiles because she did not mean to make him nervous. Wondering if where she is now is really something a man long gone would have found special._

**xxx**

Her father is forever unblinking and frozen above her fireplace in heartbeat of a second she will never get back.

And there are exactly four pictures on her mantle. His is folded and off center from years of salty tears and rough teenage hands. A family of three before they became a family of two before they became a family of one. Two slight parents and a toddler who is clinging to them both as if she already knows they are leaving. And they are all smiling at something behind the camera, and they are all so very unaware.

And then are two of old friends and half-memories that make her laugh because of how young they all were. But she does not roll over at night and miss the people who have put their arms around her and called her a friend for however long they ended up staying, and they remain only because she does not have the heart to take them down.

The fourth is blurry and bright. And she is standing next to a tall man named Sam, who is laughing at Nate who is staring at Eric with an amused expression. Hetty is taking the picture, and Callen is walking in at the last second, seemingly content with how the moment was about to be permanently documented. And she looks happy and peaceful in a way that she cannot quite place.

The frame is heavy in her hands.

Soft footsteps moving down the hallway remind her that she is not alone, and she turns to meet his sleepy gaze with a raised eyebrow.

"I see you let yourself in."

He smiles sheepishly and rubs his eyes in the face of the bright living room lights. Dressed in sweatpants and an old shirt she's seen on him many times, when she gave him an extra key to her apartment for emergencies, she never expected for it to become commonplace to wake up and see him emerge from the small guest room, or camped out on her worn couch. And she really never expected for her to miss the company when he opted to stay somewhere else.

"Nice job on the case today," his words are measured and careful, and she knows he regrets not being with them all more. She smirks and walks past him into the kitchen, throwing him a water bottle once she reaches the fridge.

"See what happens when you don't trust my judgment on suspicious insurance agents?"

He sits down on the couch and laughs, and she moves from the tile countertops to join him. The silence that follows is comfortable, familiar.

She leans her head against his shoulder and rests her hand over his for only a moment as her eyes close. Smiling, he squeezes her palm, as if to convince himself that she is actually there.

He is silent and he is brooding. She has help she does not offer and a heart that beats and a soul that sighs. And maybe tomorrow he will listen and maybe the days falling off the calendar will eventually mean more than promises she did not keep. More than hours he did not try.

And there is something to be said for the safety that two people can find in one another.

**xxx**

_Somewhere between then and now you had quite forgotten exactly where you were._

_Everything hurts and even when your eyes are closed, you feel the world falling away beneath your skin._

_A whisper in the dark told you that you were going to die._

_You may have laughed slightly (it was so long ago)._

_'I think I am already dead.'_

**xxx**

_Often times, you found yourself unable to breath._

_Faces of people you could not remember the names to._

_Why was no one coming?_

_They grabbed your hair and spit at your feet and reminded you that you were alone. Always alone._

_There was dirt on the walls and dirt on the floors and dirt in your heart. You woke up once and realized you could not tell their lies from your own in the darkness._

**xxx**

_His breath is sour and smiling as he leans over whatever shell is left of you. He reminds you of explosions and painful things. He is aware you're not quite listening, that you do not want to play his games of betrayal._

_They lock your door and leave you alone._

_And you never stop bleeding._

**xxx**

_Remind yourself, through the gasps of awareness that pull you back into the reality of your approaching end, that you knew you would go like this._

_The life that crawls achingly through your veins and pools out beneath you. Stones that are cold and hollow and make your bones rattle._

_You were always so good at being alone._

_And are now falling so very far, far, far away from the things that make you real._

**xxx**

The men that laughed at her blood and died in their own. The rasping whispers of the shadows that lived around her, people she never met, sobbing in their shaky lasts breaths.

These things that never really leave you behind.

Watching the months turn and turn until there were years between you both and the only thing keeping you from moving past his soft memory is the fact that you are not sure who you are supposed to be without him lingering here.

They wake up to the impatient ring of their cells phones, and are on the way to a crime scene before the sleep has left their eyes. And in a busy city on the other side of the country, a man only one of them knows boards a plane to Los Angeles.

Some people will always realize too late that they can never completely let go.  
There is always unfinished business.

And so it begins.

**xxx**

_Men that are aching and brave and women who are dark and angry at people they cannot stop. Living in false hopes and in a world that is swallowing them whole.  
And somewhere beneath them, a small girl hides under the bed as her world explodes in an unstoppable fury of dancing orange lights._


	2. Chapter Two

**Alright, chapter two, where things get even more rocky, and I throw two new characters your way. **

**Reposted on December 7, 2010.**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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_Sitting alone in a room that echoes of has-beens and never-weres. You are many things and peaceful is not one of them, people walk by the window of your heart and glance in sometimes.  
__It has been a long time since anyone has stopped by to say hello and change your life._

**xxx**

There is a rough patch of skin on her left wrist that aches sometimes in the early hours of the morning, glinting like the icy metal that left her writhing in her own aches and shames, turn your back and suddenly you are never awake enough to escape.

"You alright Kensi?" Sam sits down at his desk gingerly, as he often does the morning after putting in long hours with the punching bag upstairs. She offers him a quick smile meant to reassure, and is saved from having to say anything by a sharp whistle from the balcony above. Eric gives them a half-smile and a lopsided shrug at the interruption.

Callen is already waiting. The aging Director nods down at them from the screen.

"What've you got for us Director?" It's hard for their leader to contain his curiosity. Vance does not call the team often, only when the case is of a certain interest. The man tilts his head to the side, gaze flickering between the agents who are leaning against the glass table on the other side of the country from where he is now.

"Petty Officer Adam Cooper was found dead this morning. Drug overdose." He looks away as if it is something he cannot understand. "There's no evidence of murder or foul play at the scene."

"And you want us to take another look." Sam doesn't sound surprised, they've double-checked scenes before, and usually the team that worked it the first time did a decent enough job for them to leave it alone. Vance shakes his head.

"No, leave the scene." Callen leans forward now, intrigued. Kensi narrows her eyes in confusion. The man before them sighs. "Cooper was involved in several foreign terrorist operations, most notably a group that operates out of Latin America. They're nameless, but have caused millions of dollars in damage to our borders since their founding about ten years ago."

_Oh God._

And she knows where this is going, and silently begs the Director to _leave her out of this._

"I'm sending in two men. Special Agent Luke James and Special Agent Zane Brown. They should be arriving-"

"Right about now Director."

Kensi turns slowly. Almost painfully, towards a voice that she had not heard in many years, and had honestly not expected to hear again.

_They have not changed._

"The email is in your inbox Eric, I'll leave you to it." They barely register the parting words of their boss behind them. Callen is the first one that moves forward to greet them.

"Hi, I'm Special Agent Callen, this is my partner Sam, our resident psychologist Nate, computer technician Eric, and junior Agent-"

"Kensi Blye." It was Luke who spoke the first time, and it is Zane who speaks up now, with a flash of white teeth and an echoing laugh. "You allowed yourself to be demoted to a _junior_ Agent?" The boys both grin, and bound over to hug her one at a time.

"Err," Sam steps back from the scene. "You guys know each other?"

Kensi pushes them away.

"Unfortunately-" Luke scoffs at her tone, interrupting whatever explanation she might have had.

"We used to be a team operating out of Miami, before being relocated to Mexico City to make headway with the same terrorist group you're tracking now. Before that, our dads were often relocated to the same bases, so we essentially grew up together."

**xxx**

_She thinks of all the endings that never led to beginnings and all the winding, spinning walkways that brought this dead end to her now._

**xxx**

Reaching behind her and grabbing their hands fiercely, she grits her teeth and turns to meet their bewildered expressions with an angry smile before yanking them towards the doorway they just entered, and turning to her current teammates.

"Would you please give us a moment?"

**xxx**

_We are not meant to remember everything. You will love everyone and no one if your heart stretches too far. We are simple people in a complicated world. But she wishes so hard that she can feel her muscles straining in protest and her mind falling backwards into mistakes she has already made._

_There is no beauty in the goodbye that comes too soon._

**xxx**

"What are you doing?"

Because they left each other behind in a crowded airport terminal far too many months ago for them to be coming back _now _and dragging up men who will never suffer enough for all they have done. They left in a haze of white scars and black bruises and the sickly fear that it is entirely possible for someone to always be too damn late.

"You already know," she is too busy thinking of a way to get them to leave to take any notice to which one of them is actually talking to her now.

"But why send you?" Does she really sound as desperate as she thinks she does? "Vance knows that we're perfectly capable of solving this without him putting an old team back together."

One of them sighs.

"Maybe he wants this to end once and for all." All three of them smirk at the unlikelihood of _anything _ever ending once and for all. "Whatever the reason Kensi, you can't deny that this has been a long time coming."

**xxx**

_We love so many things in one lifetime._

**xxx**

So she nods, but frowns, and adds in a hushed warning because you can never be too careful.

"Don't bring it up. Any of it. Not until it absolutely needs to be said."

**xxx**

_And sometimes we lose them all one by one._

**xxx**

_Zane is tall and laughing and reminds her of playing truth or dare in the shade of their screen porch. With dark brown hair that hangs in his sparkling green eyes, and a soft accent that he gets from his mother._

_Luke is the blonde of the group, and he is the one who reads and watches and knows things without being told. He takes her under his wing at a very young age, and it is from him that she learns to read lips and sort out the liars from the people who just do not understand._

_They make a team of sorts._

_And then they get older and work long nights and hazy mornings, for now they really are a team, but also more of a family. So Zane kicks down doors and Kensi knocks down suspects and Luke plays so many mind games with them that sometimes the other two think they'd confess to just about anything by the time he's gotten the information he needs._

_When there was nothing._

_When it could have been everything._

_And now they are so many conversations away from ever making it right again._

**xxx**

"So really this dead Petty Officer is just an excuse to go after this terrorist group?" Sam isn't happy when they return. Zane shrugs.

"Seems to be. Couldn't handle the pressure, or decided it wasn't worth the cut he was being given. But now that we have a link, even if it's a weak one, Vance wants us to take a chance we might not get again." He shakes his head. "Their members aren't usually ones that'll be this careless."

Callen studies the newest -temporary- additions to his team. They're focused and pleasant, but Kensi's stiff frame and white knuckles have him worried about what exactly happened in Mexico City. She looks back at him unexpectedly, but he does not look away.

Softening her features, she nods at him before turning back to the conversation before them.

He does not know why he feels like something is very, very wrong.

**xxx**

_She has slipped through fragments of being that leave shallow footprints in her skin. Behind every smoking doorway and underneath every dimly lit chandelier there are memories of memories._

_And there are many different ways to regret._


	3. Chapter Three

**Reposted on December 7, 2010.**

_Thank you to all of you that have reviewed!_

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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_Luke raises his eyebrows amusedly as Zane topples off the picket fence he'd been walking along the top of. Kensi hides her grin in her behind her shirt sleeve and uses her free hand to help him up._

"_Meant to do that," he says it confidently, but they laugh all the same. The sun is falling behind the trees in a scramble of fantastic blues and yellows, and there is the faint smell of smoke from someone's kitchen somewhere up the dirt road they're following. She wonders how she had ever managed without them._

"_We don't know either love," Zane says cheekily (she supposes she must have voiced that last thought out loud), and Luke throws an arm around her shoulder and nudges her forward._

"_But we promise you'll never have to suffer through our absence again!"_

**xxx**

Long after the newly formed team of seven had disbanded for the night, a light flickers on in the archives room. Moving delicately around the stacks of cold cases files and records from long before her time, Kensi reaches for an old box that's right where she left it. And between all the costumes and plastic childhood memories, there are two manila folders that have long since been hastily sealed with two graying ribbons.

**xxx**

_The first time the black glove closes tightly closed around her neck, she realizes how easy it is to be angry and lonely and always oh so very sorry._

**xxx**

Taking them out with shaky fingers, they are heavy and daunting, and she thinks that if she unties the bows that have kept them in the past, they will begin to bleed and might never stop. Someone shuffles behind her.

"Callen." Because who else would be frustrated enough by the lack of answers to come back and ask questions so quickly? Maybe impatient was a better word. She leaves the box behind; papers resting in her hands, and looks at him tiredly.

"What's going on Kenz?" His gaze flickers to her side, but she knows he is asking more generally than what's brought her to this part of the building long after everyone else has gone home. She brushes past him with a sigh, and waits for him to follow her before she flips the light switch and closes the door.

"You heard from Luke earlier, we used to work together."

"You also grew up together." Kensi glares at his pointed tone, a silent threat that she _will_ leave him with no answers if he's going to be picky.

"Yes," they are at the bullpen now, sitting down at their respective chairs. "We grew up together."

He draws out the silence until he's sure she's done before speaking again.

"One of them mentioned something about you not always being a junior agent?" Callen wonders why he's never asked about where she worked before coming to work with them, and winces at the idea that if not for this sudden arrival of strangers, he might never have ever of mentioned it.

"Zane did, yeah." She's twirling a pen around carefully, thinking of how to best explain this to a man she does not want to burden.

"Technically I was to them what you are to us, the Agent in charge. So I suppose it was a bit of a shock for them to hear me being referred to as anything but that."

Callen narrows his eyes in confusion.

"If you already have experience leading a team.." He trails off as she puts the pen back on the surface in front of her, and gathers her stuff in her arms. Adjusting her load, she shakes her head as if to clear out the thoughts moving inside.

"It's a long story G." He opens his mouth to protest, but she purses her lips and he stops. "And as of yet, it's not a story that pertains to this case. If it eventually does," now she looks away, and pushes her chair in so she can move out from behind the table before starting again.

"If it does, then you'll be the first to know."

**xxx**

_The last time the black gloves close around her neck, she is not longer angry and no longer sorry.  
__But she does not think it is possible to be any more lonely than this._

**xxx**

_Zane clicks his tongue disapprovingly at the screen before them. "You know as well as I do Luke that we don't have enough information to storm in after them yet."_

_Kensi buries her head in her hands and tries to block out the argument that has been going on for hours now. They are running out of time to make a move._

"_We have to act _now_ Zane!" And there is truth to the words that make her blood boil and her throat seize, because no one ever said this would be fair. "And you know as well as I do that we can't all go in after them." He lowers his voice, losing the fight that he'd held onto for so long. "We can't do this successfully if all three of us are trying to infiltrate the same cell." She wonders idly if this is really the end._

_And if it is, what exactly it is the end of._

"_So you're suggesting what?" Hands slam down on the counter, making her jump. Luke leans back against the wall, eyes closed, face contorted into something that she thinks might be pain. "There's no way that sending one of us in alone is going to accomplish anything more than sending three of us will."_

_Luke pushes back against the wall now and joins them at the center of the room. There is the taste of an apology on her tongue but she cannot imagine why, and they are stuck in a pattern of silence that will soon drive them all crazy._

_Zane sinks heavily to the floor because it is never clearer to someone than when it is over that they were fighting a battle they'd already lost._

_She is not sure who really ever walks away first._

**xxx**

Though knowing that she will be alone tonight, she locks the door anyways. _Just in case,_ and because she has had enough of being caught off guard. She is not hungry, and leaves the kitchen dark but the living room bright and is almost too relieved when she sinks down to the couch, pulling the coffee table closer.

She remembers the dirt and she remembers the copper air that made her feel violated and cruel. The countdown of days without names that could –did- leave her silent and writhing and already more dead than alive than anyone has a right to be.

**xxx**

_'Kill me.' With dark eyes and sharp teeth the demand is met with rounds of laughter and flickers of crude conversation. He steps forward, leans to her ear and she has never wished someone as much harm as she wishes him. Words that slur together, she does not care enough to make sense of them._

_But she knows that she will not die tonight._

**xxx**

Trembling fingers tied these ribbons, and trembling fingers work out the knots now. And underneath the smooth black type and pretty case names, there is a history that is half hers and half something else.

She knows better than Luke or Zane or Vance or Callen, that she might not be strong enough to pull herself out of this again.


	4. Chapter Four

**This chapter might be a little confusing towards the end, but it goes back to the allusions made in chapter one. **

_Thanks to all my amazing reviewers!_

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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_"Kensi." And she frowns because there is rain falling somewhere outside the damp clay walls, making the air that feels like smoke and tastes like acid cling to her hair and burn her downcast eyes. There is someone before her now, and she is not startled, although she is certain she was alone not seconds ago._

_The name escapes her, but the disappointment on his pale cheeks does not._

"_Kensi." She wishes he would stop saying her name. It rattles her heart, as if she is seven again, and has just broken her neighbor's window with the stray swing of a baseball bat. He does not leave when she does not answer.  
__Thunder lashes out, and shakes the chains that are drawn tight by her hanging arms. Blinking wearily, the man before her fades out of focus. And then he is resting next to her, head leaning back against the wall, bright and searching for answers she does not have._

"_When are you coming home?"  
__The word home tumbles out in a mess of gold keys and sleeping bags. Empty refrigerators and baby blue curtains. Somewhere outside the black door that never opens of her –for him, for them, but never for her- a woman is sobbing in great gasping heaves. Kensi wishes she'd stop. The boy next to her leans closer, his attention moving across her skin, surveying the damage she does not think can be undone._

"_Why aren't you fighting back?" He shakes his head and crosses his arms indignantly. She would swear that he was much older when he first came to her, but now he cannot be any older than nine. "The Kensi _I _know would never _not_ fight back." He peers at her streaked face. "I don't think you're really her at all."_

_The woman is screaming now, distant and piercing through the raging storm that has covered the camp. Maybe she is not who she thought she was, and maybe, although it is terrifying and confusing and a heavy, heavy thought, she thinks that maybe, she was never really anyone at all. Turning her head as best she can to her right, she finds with little surprise that the boy is gone. Lightening lights up the cell that is black and brown and red with blood that cannot possibly all be hers, and suddenly, she knows she must be dead._

_The screaming stops, and there is silence._

**xxx**

"Zane, Luke, Kensi, Sam, you four check out Adam Cooper's apartment, see if there's anything there that might help us work this case." Callen refuses to met her eyes, and she is more amused than annoyed. Sam grins at the chance to spend more time with the newest agents, and Zane grabs her hand excitedly before yanking her out the door of the conference room.

"Whoa Zane!" Managing to pull him back just in time to avoid taking a headfirst fall down the stairs, she gives him an exasperated look.

"C'mon Kensi, you know I've always wanted to see LA!" She glares.

"Contain your excitement Zane, we're going to a crime scene. I promise, Luke and I will take you to the beach once this is all over." She regrets the words almost as soon as they've left her mouth, because he's already at the bottom of the stairs, making plans with an always-amused Sam.

"Shouldn't have said that," Luke's tone is weary, but he's smiling. She sighs in agreement, and they move to follow the two agents out of the building.

"How've you been Luke?" Kensi's tone is almost apologetic, and he winces at it. Just because they've agreed to work together doesn't mean this conversation will ever be any easier. Luke shrugs.

"It's been a rough couple of years," he could laugh, because it's not like things for them have ever been anything but. "Worked out of Atlanta for awhile before transferring back to Miami, where I met up with Zane, coincidentally." The _'only thing missing was you,' _goes unsaid, and she is grateful.

"He's lived in Miami for how long? And the idea of going to the beach still excites him?" Luke can only grin before they're at the waiting black car, and he joins Zane in the backseat.

"I still can't believe he left you shotgun," Sam says, and she rolls her eyes.

Kensi knows that as soon as they're done testing the waters, she'll have to fight for it like the rest of them, and that's when things will _really_ be back to normal.

**xxx**

_It starts with a shove and the grabbing of wrists and the spinning of thoughts. Maybe officially, it does not ever really start at all, but the ground is sticky and her clothes are stained, and she does not think she is sleeping anymore. So it starts, and sometimes she forgets it ended too, and wakes up with crescent-shaped scars fiery red on her arms._

"_You cannot stay silent forever." His mouth stumbles over the English words and she might have laughed at one time. But now she can only shiver and know he is wrong. It is easy to not to speak of things you only remember in instances of passing time. She wonders exactly how long it has been since this all became a strange sort of normal._

_They bring her muddy water when they remember, but always leave it a little out of reach for her chained body to drink from, and she suspects they give it to her after she has already passed out from the exhaustion of trying anyways._

_She hates them all._

_The younger workers, the boys that might be nineteen, but shuffle around as though they are much older, speak to her sometimes. Softly and fluidly, and she only catches some of it, but it is nice to hear words that are not always referring to her own demise. Most of them are sad, and pity her and themselves and the big brothers that grew up to be terrorists and now they must be as well._

_And the will to care must have been beat out of her, because she finds herself unable to pity them back. They seem to know that there is a good chance she will outlive them anyways, and will not look her in the eye. The ringing of gunshots sends her shaking into a corner in the early morning hours._

_Most of them do not come back._

**xxx**

Sam uses the key Callen threw at them on their way out to unlock the front door. A few doorways inside are still blocked off with crime scene tape, but they duck under them easily, and begin sifting through the Petty Officer's belongings.

Kensi moves into the small study off the left of the living room. By the amount of dust on the desk, it's obvious he doesn't use this room for much. But upon closer inspection of the bookshelf, she finds what she knows they are looking for.

"Guys," and she reaches under the crinkling paperbacks, pulling out folders that are not totally unlike her own. Zane takes a few from the bottom shelf, and she spreads hers out over the wooden desk.

"What are they?" Sam is looking over her shoulder, and they can almost hear his mind racing.

"They're our equivalent of case folders, in a way," Luke breathes. "People they've killed, warehouses they've raided, shipments they've made. Anything they deem worth documenting gets a folder."

"Then how did they end up here?"

Most of the files Kensi has flipped through have been over closed weapons deals and old blueprints of buildings they'd already long since ransacked. But when she turns over the last one, there is something close to fear that catches her breath.

Because staring up at her are three laughing faces, and a signature she thought she'd never see again scrawled at the bottom of the page. Snapping it shut, she looks desperately at Zane, who has seen it too. Somewhere behind them, Luke pulls out his cell phone.

"Looks like it's time to call in an old friend."


	5. Chapter Five

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One**

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_She blinks once. Twice._

"_Maybe you misheard me." He says it so certainly that she can only warily agree. She must have misheard. Leaning forward on his elbows, the man gives her an angry smile as he taps the stack of papers before him. "You're being reassigned."_

_No. She heard him right the first time. Absently, she reaches down to scratch her wrist, and winces when she comes in contact with the hard plaster of her cast instead. When she does not reply, the smile disappears, and he gives up all pretenses of politeness. They wait in silence for the other to break._

_Above his head, resting proudly on the wooden mantle, there is a dark brown case with three medals, all lined up. She watches it carefully, squinting her eyes as if to try and read the tiny words engraved on the gleaming metal. And she might regret thinking it later, but she cannot place the face before her in the dusty fields of battle._

_She cannot see him giving up any part of his comfortable office, his neatly arranged file cabinets, his orderly life, to protect the likes of her._

"_Miss Bl-"_

"_I heard you." It comes out softer than she intended, for she had wanted to match his impatient tone. She knows that at one time, it would have been natural. Zane, Luke. They've been hovering over her for days now, waiting for the smoke to fade from her eyes. Because the doctors told them that she would live, and they are now waiting for her to prove that she is really alive._

_And when her life is signed away, she knows they will not (cannot) come with her._

"_There's a car waiting for you outside." He snaps at her now, ready to be rid of her broken bones and too-thin features. "You'll be taken to DC to clear up some of the finer points of your reassignment." Somewhere in the midst of his words he has begun to write, signing documents one by one before shoving them towards her._

_Go. Leave._

_Get into the car and get onto the plane. Hand over your phone and keep your tray table up. And we will take you somewhere new and maybe one day you will become someone new._

_She feels as if she has played this game before._

_Slowly, Kensi stands. The man before her, whom she has only met in passing before now, and does not wish it any differently anyways, only pauses._

_"It's for your own good." There is something akin to defeat in his words, and she suddenly feels much heavier. Because it is for her own good, because it might work out all right, because nothing could hurt worse than you already do now._

_He leans back in his leather seat and does not meet her eyes._

_And she turns around on the navy blue carpet and does not look back._

**xxx**

"Agent Callen."

Luke's voice is soft and all too expected; the older agent squinting at the screen before him had been wondering when he'd make himself known.

"Agent James," Callen turns away from the screen as Luke moves away from the doorframe to lean back against the glass table covering the middle of the room. "How's reaching your old contact going?" There's a flicker of anger that passes much too quickly, and it catches Callen off guard. Luke rubs his eyes tiredly.

"It's a lot more complicated than we'd like it to be." He shrugs. "But I don't think any of us expected anything less from him." From the man who signed the documents hidden in Cooper's apartment. From the man who boarded a plane and filed a life away. Who does not regret, but always remembers.

"How exactly do you know him?" Callen is shifting into interrogation mode, and the other agent notices, shooting him a wry grin. There's a small lull in the conversation.

Luke clears his throat.

"Call him a middle man, if you want." Now there is definite anger lurking there, his knuckles turning white under his grip. "He needed a team for an undercover assignment against a terrorist organization he had ties to, and he got us." Luke lowers his gaze. "Lives don't matter to guys like him. Get the job done whether or not you lose everything while doing it. And when it's over, he expects you to forget it ever happened."

And if these are puzzles pieces, Callen knows that he still cannot make a picture. Luke looks back over at him, and there is a certain hesitancy that was not there before.

"There's something you need to understand, Agent Callen. As soon as we get a hold of him, our case is going to be re-opened. Our case from five years ago." And his laugh is one of bitterness and regret. "You're going to have to keep an open mind about what happened down there. Kensi doesn't want us here. For what might be good reasons, but probably not. She needs us. And pretty soon, she's going to need you."

Luke pushes off from the table and moves back through the door quickly, just as the agent in question appeared at the top of the staircase.

"Hey," she greets cautiously. Luke gives her a comforting smile, it throws Callen off guard at the suddenness of his mood change, before he moves in the direction she just came. She shoots Callen a confused glance.

"What was that about?"

Callen shakes his head, and turns back to the information they've gathered so far. He can almost hear feel her frustration at his dismissal, and there is a pang of guilt at the cold shoulder he knows he's been giving her.

But when he turns around again, she is gone.


	6. Chapter Six

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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_Metal grips to skin in a violent strain. She trembles, fists clenched, toes curled. There is a small pinprick and then there is fire coursing through her angry veins. 'Think of flowers. Think of baseball. Think of wooden fences and think of gray storm clouds.' And whatever you do, do not think of the chemicals that are slowly drowning you._

_The hazy figure in front of her tosses something small and glass over his shoulder as he leaves her there. It shatters._

_She does not scream._

_But she suddenly remembers sitting on the tile counter of her mother's kitchen. Her mom would laugh and poke her small nose, crooning in a language that still felt awkward rolling off her own tongue. Sweet smells from the oven and the gentle dripping of water. The telephone would ring, the front door would open. The chirping of birds she never actually saw, the soft carpet on the dining room floor. When soft hands would smooth her hair over her forehead and whisper lovely stories with such conviction that Kensi could not help but believe them to be true. She would murmur sleepily that she loved her, the lights would flicker out._

_And she often dreams of growing up and staying in a world where the sidewalks were cracked and the paint on the roof was chipped._

_But there are funerals and cross-country moves and phone calls that are never returned. __So she finds herself in a different world of cracked floors and chipped paint. Of slanted metal chains and glass that never sinks deep enough to let you go._

_She does not cry._

_"Smile child, things are not as bad as you make them."_

_Kensi wonders what she would think of her now. Bruised and burning. Crooked and a little limp. What her mother lacked in cruelty, she has found in her captors. __Everything fades into a shade of gray that she finds fitting. There is a dull pulsing in her chest, and rickety heart just trying to make it 'one more day, just one more day and they'll come for you.'_

_She thinks she feels someone's breath above her. Dangerous words that sound like 'who are you?' and 'who are you working for?' slip from their lips._

_And maybe, if she told them she did not know anymore, it would not have been a lie._

**xxx**

The elevator closes quickly behind the two men as they make their way down the narrow hallway. Zane waits patiently as Luke opens his own door with the plastic room key, and follows behind him. The beds are made, the lights are bright. There is a balcony that Luke suspects overlooks nothing, but it is too dark to tell. Zane sits on the edge of the bed with a heavy sigh.

"Did he ever answer?" It is a dull question. Rhetorical. Luke goes about setting the alarm for the following morning, and setting up his laptop.

"No." It comes out uncertain; Zane looks up. "But he knows we're looking for him."

And if they agree on nothing else, they agree on that. This man that they have only met in voice and through the stiff paper of goodbye never really said. And they find it hard to believe one can harbor so much hate towards someone they do not know.

"He'll call her. Kensi, I mean." Desperate now, Zane is almost begging Luke to disagree. They have only just now found her again. "This is all going to blow up in our face you know? Once she knows."

Once she knows. Because if she does not already know what it feels to be lied to, she will find out soon. And the two men here recognize the regret of agreements long passed.

"Yeah." Luke's fingers freeze over the keys, the letters blurring together under his tired eyes.

"I know."

**xxx**

_"We need an agent to go undercover." The man that owns the voice is hidden by the lines of static that run across the screen. Zane squints, but to no avail._

_"Alright, Zane and I will talk to Kensi as soon as she gets in. We'll call you back when we've decided." Luke is calm and professional. They have been waiting for this call since their plane touched down almost a month ago._

_"No." The reply is short and sudden. Zane rears back in surprise. "No. Agent Blye will be the agent that goes."_

_Luke raises an eyebrow at his partner, who in turn mouths 'who is this guy?'_

_"Why Kensi?" There is the faint rustling of papers at the question. The quick scratch of a pen. The answer is suspended, the agents wait._

_"The point of sending an agent undercover in this operation," he begins coolly, "is not to infiltrate the system." There is something akin to laugh that filters over the connection. "No, not for information. This group is too advanced for that, this operation has dragged on for much too long already." The static worsens, and Zane suddenly knows where this is going._

_"We need a reason to attack their camp."_

_And there is nothing left to say._

**xxx**

The knocking on her door is rapid and urgent. Kensi shuffles sleepily to answer it, glancing at the clock as she passes the kitchen. Waking up someone this late should be a crime.

"Callen," she is more surprised than she feels she should be. They don't usually stay mad for long. He shrugs an apology and she rolls her eyes. "It's late."

Grinning sheepishly, he steps past her as she moves back from the doorway.

"I know, I know." Watching her as she checks the locks one last time, he glances around the familiar apartment.

"The guest room is clean, and the sheets for the couch were just washed," she has already begun moving back towards her own room. "Whichever you feel the most comfortable with." He could have laughed at her obvious exhaustion, a small pang of guilt hitting him when he realizes how hard these past few days must have been for her. He sinks down onto the couch as her door clicks shut, gazing absently around the room.

A few moments pass before his eyes come to rest on the coffee table before him. Instantly, he recognizes the two manila folders as the ones Kensi had with her upon leaving the archives room. He reaches for them without much conscious thought.

And if ever one could pinpoint the exact second everything went wrong:

This would be it.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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_Case File #623_

_Concerning: Special Agent Kensi Blye_

He does not remember when his fingers started shaking.

But when the pictures of a girl he thought he knew start looking black and blue, dead and empty, bloody and limp, he cannot breath just right. She didn't put this on her resume. Carefully penned sentences explain each injury, each misstep of the case.

They didn't catch everyone.

Men with dusty beards and skin gray from the shadows they live in. The ones that got away identified by only names and flimsy descriptions. No statement from Kensi. No explanation for why she was there in the first place. He wonders why he's never seen the scars before.

"See anything good?"

Her voice startles him. Whirling around, he finds her leaning against the archway that leads into the living room, now dressed in sweatpants and an NCIS t-shirt, but alert with narrow eyes that he cannot read. He can only stare back as she crosses the distance between them, and gently removes the files from his grasp.

"This isn't the whole story you know," Kensi murmurs as she flips casually through the pages that might have sealed her fate after all. Callen wonders if he's breathing, but he feels for certain that she should be a lot angrier than she is. Squinting, he focuses on her dark arms. A barrage of soft gray scars glint in the dim lighting, covered up by sleeves and watches and the rough skin they lay over. He suddenly feels very sick.

"Zane and Luke," she begins again, placing the papers back into the table and gingerly sitting next to him. "They were my best friends."

"Were?" He didn't mean to ask, but the question tumbled out of his mouth before he realized it was there at all. There was a hint of bitterness that seemed to hang behind her carefully composed features; he wondered what she was waiting for. He longed for her to move closer, put her hand over his like she sometimes would and just listen to the hours pass on around them.

"Who is this man?"

A frown tugged at her lips and she blinked away the memories that have clouded her vision. 'This man,' she could only assume, was the man that had signed the files that led them on a wild chase through telephone lines. She wondered if there was an honest answer for his question. Really, it is not her story to tell because she is not supposed to know it anyways.

Zane and Luke. Luke and Zane. Two names that blur into hundreds of short stories and long autumn nights. The wide, bright rooms of a college they moved through too quickly, the smoking engines of drunk drivers and the last wishes of desperate men that led them to Mexico City. That led her to die.

And she did not.

(Sometimes, she wonders why).

But she dreams of this man with the straight suit and ironed tie in and air-conditioned office with a leather chair. And the conversation that never ended whispers behind every gunshot and every suspect. The things he did not say because he did not have to.

'_Who is this man Who is this man Who is this man."_

She can feel his impatience seeping into her own skin and she fights the urge to flee. And the answers you get are never the ones you are looking for.

**xxx**

"_Kensi," and Zane's eyes are dark and careful. "Be safe."_

_Because he is lying and they all know it. Luke squeezes her palm tightly and closes his eyes as if to forget she has already left them behind. Nodding sharply, she moves away from the doorway they're standing in, backing out into the sunlight. The car that may have once been white that sputters impatiently behind her, and the driver wears sunglasses and old sneakers that squeak when he changes from pedal to pedal._

_She does not look back._

**xxx**

"He was-" She falters, brow furrowed in concentration.

"He oversaw the investigation. Signed all the paperwork, called for updates, made sure everything was getting done." There is a shrug of indifference. "I only met him once."

"Why do you need him here?"

The question he does not ask. Why call him back when this is so many years past? Why do you need him now?

Because this was his mission to begin with. His dirty work and his enemies that are still waiting in corners and hotel rooms for him to show his face and regret it. Because she was only a pawn and they all know it (knew it). And these men did not this far from home and stage a highly convincing suicide for nothing.

They did not kill her the first time.  
So they will kill her now.  
They do not accept men who lie and steal and then back into the safety of their enemies.  
So they have forced him out of hiding and back into the world he sent her into.

Once upon a distant time, she only had herself to protect. And she was in so many pieces that she really had nothing to lose. And now she has a team who does not need to know about things like torture and betrayal, and a once family that does not deserve to help her out of this when they are the ones who let her fall in the first place.

"I don't want you on this case."

Callen's head whips around, eyes flashing. She does not look at him.

"I know you're not going to listen to me, but I might as well try."

"Kensi," Callen begins, but she cuts him off.

"Don't. I know you've been through your own battles, and I know how much they hurt you. With every metal box that Hetty puts on your desk, with every fake name, I know. And we let you go, we follow from a distance and watch you tear yourself up over everything you could've done better, every life you could have saved."

She runs a finger over a circle shaped scar on the bottom side of her wrist. A burn mark.

"I'm being thrown back into a world I thought I'd escaped, one that I am going to do everything in my power to keep you, all of you, out of. The less you know," she winces. "The less you know, the safer you are."

"And what about you?" The question surprises her.

"I've been in this game for far too long to get out of it now."

She stands up quickly, and disappears back into the darkness of the apartment.

Somewhere, he hears a door close.

He does not sleep.

**xxx**

"_Where is he."_

_She feels that should be a question, but his voice is steady, and speaks of demands. He does not ask for things. In fact, he does not really know if she is working for a 'he' at all. It's just very likely. She thinks he must have been waiting a very long time for someone like her to come along._

_But he is also very impatient, for he bends down to her hunched form and takes a smoldering cigarette out of his mouth and presses it lightly against the underside of her left wrist. She withers at the contact, and the smoke leaves the skin curling and red. His breath is hot in her face._

"_You are running out of time."_

_And he does not say that no one is coming and he does not say that the shrieks at night are from dying prisoners just like her. He does not need to tell her that she has long outlived her stay for her to feel it in her hollow chest._

"_Think about that."_


	8. Chapter Eight

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**READ THIS: Just so you know up front, this entire chapter is a flashback. Don't think I'm introducing a whole new plotline/set of characters, I just felt like it was unnecessary to italicize the whole chapter. Also, I'm ignoring Macy's existence (sorry!), and pretending that Hetty has always been there. Finally (I'm not sure if this matters), remember that the building they're using in this season is new to them. So the one mentioned here is not the same one.**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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_Mexico:_

She is floating suddenly, the whistling of a whip destined towards her taunt skin the last thing she remembers. There are inky illusions of airplanes, faceless men, and broken bones, and the weightlessness makes her dizzy. As if moving through a cloud, her mind pushes forward, through the haze that has surrounded her. And there is no unexpected burst of light or freedom from the pain that only dulls in sleep.

Luke appears before her.

And she aches because he looks at her sadly, but not remorsefully. She wonders if she will spend forever looking for the little boy with blonde hair and a soft smile that she had to earn. A boy who knew the difference between right and wrong, although she cannot say whether or not he was wrong for sending her here.

"I'd do it all over again," he says and he means it. Slowly, she tilts her head to one side and closes her eyes. And she wonders if she is worth that little to him. To them both. But she remembers her father, who lived and probably died for a country he loved. And she thinks that if sending her in and sacrificing her life is what it took to keeping his memory safe; she would do it all over again too. When she opens her eyes again, he is waiting.

And her skin is gray and her heart is heavy. Somewhere in the fog there is a heavy pounding and a heat that feels like an approaching flame.

"I know," and she means that too. She does know. She's known why they looked angry and sad and lost up until the moment she lost connection with the outside world. Because their job is full of betrayal and when she is called up by a man with static for a face and a hollow, warning voice, she hangs her head and lets it be.

'Why aren't you fighting back?' The question that was asked by a boy that might have been real but probably wasn't. And she is not fighting back because she does not remember what she is fighting for. For a dead father or a dead mother. For friends that would take back nothing but words and a country that will never know her name. And she would fight for herself, but there is not enough left to make winning worth the dying effort. So she holds out with the hope that maybe her loss will not be another mission failed.

Neither one of them move for a time. But eventually, the steady rhythm increases to a deafening roar, and the heat threatens to consume them both. So Luke bows his head and fades away into something dusty and dead and she remains. Her skin, which is solid and clear in these confrontations, turns pink and raw. The fire moves to her hands and her back. Her arms are too thin and her ribs are too broken. Dirt and grime and blood that is not hers stick to her legs. The long, thin slits of a knife cover her stomach and slide up and down her arms.

The whip crashes down again and she screams.

The man who is in front her and has the power to stop the blows that nearly knock her unconscious with each swing leans forward with a smile that reveals his too-white teeth and smoky breath.

"All you have to do is talk," he whispers, as he pressed the burning remains of what might have once been a cigar against where he always does, the hollow of her wrist.

And so she fades away.

**xxx**

_Los Angeles:_

"Agent Blye." Stepping off the small plane, she does not know how she heard the small voice over the engine's roar. But there, at the foot of the metal staircase is a woman with kind wrinkles and short brown hair. She reminds Kensi of the mother she lost on a calm spring morning in the shock of a fire they could not stop.

"Agent Blye, welcome to Los Angeles." And the words remind her that all the details of her reassignment had, as promised, been sorted through and agreed upon.

She could keep her name.

But she would not lead the team and she would not speak of the past that she was already locking away in the corners of her mind. She would be a Kensi Blye that made jokes and came from a navy base and destroyed cars. And it would become easy and natural and maybe one day she would believe the lie as much as everyone else. And maybe one day she could look back at the two men she left behind and know that they had been forgiven all along.

The car ride was silent, because the woman (Hetty, she was called), seemed to know she didn't have much to say. Pulling the car to a stop outside of what seemed to be an abandoned office building, complete with rusting fire escapes and shattered glass underneath the streetlights, Hetty pulled out the keys.

"Don't worry," she said at Kensi's raised eyebrows, "it's not quite what it seems." Then she unlocked the only door she could see and led her into a world of disguises and touch-screen computers. And although the outside reminds her of cells and summer air, the inside has the comfortable touch of something akin to home.

"Mr. Callen, Mr. Hanna, if you will," Hetty calls out to two men standing around a desk, caught in an argument that is quickly forgotten. "This is our new agent, Miss. Kensi Blye. I trust that you'll take care of her on her first day." And with a pointed stare at the two agents and a wink in Kensi's direction, Hetty spins on one heel and walks back the way the two just came.

"Callen," The shorter one says with a wane smile and a searching gaze. He is the cautious one and she widens her eyes in practiced innocence and measures her words. "And this is Sam Hanna." With an eye roll at him and a wink at her, the other man takes the greeting in stride.

"Where're you joining us from?" And she tells them of a father, and does not tell them of his funeral. And she tells them of navy bases from lifetimes ago, partners, boundaries, places and feelings that do not exist and they let her in with open arms and ready laughs.

But that evening, the newly painted apartment and empty living room that is not home yet remind her of everything she has lost.

**xxx**

_Mexico:_

Today marks the fifteenth day since the white car fell to gunfire and she awoke to clanging chains and sewn up wounds. The men are angry and she is proud. There are rustles beyond the crumbling walls of her own prison, and sometimes there are frenzied whispers and retching gasps. Other soldiers of battles that they did not expect to lead them here.

They fill your veins with chemicals and your mouth with poisons. They mark your body with angry lashes and claim your life as their own but you have nothing to say. 'It will be a quick end,' promises of death, 'you won't even know it's coming.'

But it is already here, lurking behind every captor and underneath her eyelids. She does not think she can run from this again.

She is burning from the core of her chest to the tips of her toes.

Maybe it is not them. Maybe it is the fact that there are faces in ever corner and there is wild laughter that erupts from down the narrow hall each night. They will all lose their minds and most already have. She knows that she too, cannot hold out forever.

Wrapping her crooked fingers around the shackles that bind her, she cannot tell if she is crying.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One:**

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Three men stumble through the sliding door in tandem, arms and legs shifting awkwardly around one another, the bags under their eyes revealing the weary night behind them. Two of them remember this feeling of desperate hopelessness because it never really fell far enough behind for either to forget it was there. The other thinks of open eyes and hollow throats and a country filled with snow.

Somewhere outside the darkened room, the sun is shining.

"Nice of you to finally join us." Sam is smirking, his words oddly out of place in their troubled thoughts. Kensi, beside him, is focused solely on the pictures and letters before her, and does not greet them. "Kensi has news."

She winces at the introduction. Silence falls as they wait.

Throwing a quick glance at Zane and Luke, they seem to understand where this is going. "I got a call last night," and she can almost feel Zane stiffening behind her. "From the head investigative agent on our case. He's here."

"In LA?" Zane is quiet and somber, nervous.

"In the boat house." Her fingers drum against the surface impatiently, waiting for the silent exchange to finish between the four other agents. The voice that had pulled her from the restless sleep she'd fallen into was thin and distracted, closer to begging for shelter and time than she had ever been. All of a sudden, the man in the shadows was under lock and key. All of a sudden, this world of nightmares was no longer confined to her dreams.

"Luke, Zane," they jump at the unexpected confrontation, "do your best." Pushing the files she had been scrutinizing just seconds before into Zane's hands, Kensi turns on her heel and is out the door.

As she breezes down the steps, and out the old mission's front door, she knows that she will have to face him again. And now they will both be in wooden chair with sad eyes. Gone is the large office and gleaming medals. They are both hiding from the same enemy.

She sits through to Los Angeles traffic without complaint, and arrives at the boathouse alone.

**xxx**

Luke and Zane enter the room one at a time, and their timid steps would be almost funny under any other circumstance. Kensi closes her eyes, because this conversation cannot go well any way she chooses to look at it.

"Agents." The voice is rough now; he is calmer in the safety of the interrogation room.

"Er-" Zane looks at Luke questioningly.

"Agent Isaac…Jones," his face is illuminated in the bright lights that hang overhead, and she studies him carefully. In the years since their parting, the wrinkles have deepened; the lips are thinner, and scars scream greetings long past due back up at her.

"Former agent," Luke slides easily into the seat across from him. "It says here your position was terminated three years ago due to questionable methods of operation used under your supervision."

"Something of which you, of all people," the older man leans back in his seat, "are all too familiar with."

Zane stiffens and Kensi fights the urge to pull them both out of there before things get any uglier than necessary.

"Unfortunately," Isaac begins again, "I'm not here for either of you." Luke raises an eyebrow skeptically, Zane shifts forward, Sam and Callen are silent and Nate watches.

Kensi already knows, because she has been here before too.

"Agent Blye." He is speaking louder now, because he has played this game several times already. "I need a word."

The two boys stay for another moment that she does not think will end before standing up and the click of an opening door is heard. The three of them meet eyes for a brief second, and she can feel an apology they have never actually said creeping through her skin.

This interrogation process is not entirely comfortable territory. At least, not this end of it, because she watches and reads; more often than not, she doesn't speak. Two black eyes follow her every move as she takes a seat. She wonders what either of them are actually looking for.

"How've you enjoyed your time here in Los Angeles?" It is an odd question, seemingly out-of-place and he asks it anyways. But she remembers his pen scratching over the papers on an old desk, and the gentle pause that fell in between it all. Her knuckles turn white as she curls her fingers into a fist.

"You want to know why I'm here." She does not even have to nod, because he can read her answer all the same. That he has no right to be here now, no right to bring this danger to her city and her friends. No right to confine her to a life of secrets.

"They know you're alive, Kensi." He is speaking quickly now, in a whisper that they both know those outside the room may not be able to hear. "And they're coming back to finish what they started."

All her breath is forced out of her throat at the words she thought he might say, but hoped (oh God, she hoped), that he would not.

"This is _your_ fight," the words are forced through clenched teeth. "It always has been. Why should I have to die because of your loose ends?" He shakes his head remorsefully.

"If I hadn't had to send you in Kensi, you know that-"

"I know that you would have _sent me in_ anyways!" She is standing now, cheeks red, eyes narrow.

These two angry, proud people who both know that they are walking targets. That they have spent so long lying that it may be impossible to set things right again now. With one last, long look, she opens the door and leaves without turning her back on him. The eyes of her friends are wide. Confusion littered with slight understanding.

"I'm leaving." She does not stop moving towards the door, and yanks her arm out of Sam's reaching grip. "He's coming with me. Luke, Zane," now she does falter, in both words and step, turning to the two men in the corner.

"Do what you can with the case, you know it better than either Callen or Sam. But when," Luke tenses, "if, things go wrong-" maybe she almost breaks, but they would like to think not as they wait for her to speak again.

"If things go wrong, stay as far away as you can. All of you."

"You know as well as I do that we're not about to let you walk away." Sam steps forward, the voice of reason that strikes her, but does not reach deep enough to change her mind.

"And you don't honestly expect her to let you come along." Heads twist at the sudden interruption, the former agent is now leaning casually against the doorframe of the room. Kensi takes the opportunity to back up several more steps. "This is beyond you, and the closer you get, the more likely you are to destroy this entire operation." Isaac's concentration is focused steadily on Luke now, who does not shift.

In the moments of distraction, Callen steps up next to Kensi.

"What do you think you're doing," he hisses through clenched teeth. She tears her gaze away from the growing confrontation behind him.

"What do you _think _I'm doing?" They have not been this close since the night that her old partners had arrived, and he is surprised at the hurt that flashes across her face at the question. "I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago. I'm protecting my family."

"_This_ qualifies as protecting?"

"It's something I have to do." Her demeanor darkens suddenly at something Isaac has said, and Callen turns his head slightly to see the man glancing at her with urgent eyes.

"Kensi, what do you owe him? You said it yourself, this isn't your fight."

She shakes her head because she knows that this is not something she can ask him to understand.

"We have to go."

And before any of the others can stop them, the former Agent Jones brushes past them out the door. Kensi gives them a quick nod, and follows.

Turning sharply on his heels, Callen faces the two agents who had brought them to this point.

"_What is going on?"_


	10. Chapter Ten

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**I'm (temporarily) back. Sorry for the long wait!**

**Reviews are appreciated!**

Disclaimer in Chapter One:

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When Zane was sixteen, he discovered that there were many different ways to be wrong.

In words and in intentions, in all his truths and between his stolen identities, and he could not escape it in case files or late night stakeouts. Kensi had always had her secrets; Luke had always had his words to hide behind.

But he had always been a little more open, a little less sure.

And now, with the eyes of these only slightly familiar men staring him down, he would be the first to speak. Because it was his nature and it was the way things had always been.

**xxx**

_"Why Kensi?" There is the faint rustling of papers at the question. The quick scratch of a pen. The answer is suspended, the agents wait._

**xxx**

Zane has always believed that he never stopped waiting.

**xxx**

"_We need a reason to attack their camp."_

**xxx**

A reason to kill and a reason to believe that they are all still on the same side.

**xxx**

_And there is nothing left to say._

**xxx**

There has never _been_ anything left to say.

**xxx**

"Jones."

The apartment is empty, and the two will not be there for long. A clock ticks restlessly on the mantle; the window over the kitchen window hangs slightly open. The carpet is stained.

"Jones," she repeats, shaking her head and scoffing. "Never pictured you to go for such a name that was so…common."

The man next to her raises an eyebrow.

"Got any better ideas?" He leans against the counter. "I was _trying_ to fit in you know."

Kensi shuts her eyes and rests her head on the wall behind her. Petty Officer Adam Cooper, the man that might have started it all, Luke and Zane, Callen and Sam. Hetty, Eric, Dom and Deeks. Isaac.

"Did you know Cooper?" The question feels irrelevant as she asks it, but he answers all the same.

"Not really. The name is familiar, but that's about it. He was much younger than me." There is a pause. "He was our warning."

"Your warning." Her retaliation is less demanding this time. Isaac raises an eyebrow.

"You honestly expect them to let you walk away? They held you captive for months, Kenz, before we got there. You're the one that got away. You're the loose end. You're the black mark on their nearly perfect record."

She shifts her gaze to the open window and grits her teeth.

"They're after me because I double crossed them."

**xxx**

_"All you have to do is talk," he whispers, as he pressed the burning remains of what might have once been a cigar against where he always does, the hollow of her wrist._

**xxx**

"And they're after you because they can't afford to leave a job unfinished."

**xxx**

_She is burning from the core of her chest to the tips of her toes._

**xxx**

When the door of the apartment slams open several hours later, the two are already long since gone.

**xxx**

_The agents walked into the clearing several hours before they were scheduled to strike. Soft breathes and slight footfall, leaning towards a future that would ultimately destroy the past._

_Black masks and bulletproof vests. Guns loaded and hands twitching._

_Luke loses himself to the quiet rustling of the desert._

_Zane has nothing left to feel._

**xxx**

A whisper in the dark told you that you were going to die.

You may have laughed slightly (it was so long ago).

'I think I am already dead.'

**_xxx_**

_There is fire._

_And in the damp cellars of the terrorists' headquarters, the flames are smoky and gray instead of red, the heat clings to their jackets. Vision blurred and everyone is yelling because everyone is scared. Somehow, they have all run straight into a world where the monsters hide behind corners and peek over second story windows because there are no beds to be found._

_There was a time when this was just a man on a flickering screen, a woman sliding down the wall next to them, the secrets that were never really a secret at all. And it became real and painful and it might be burning them to pieces and they don't even know it._

_The two men search under floorboards and behind every locked door and she is not there._

_Ghosts that whisper such soft things. Lost in dreams and numbers and maybe next time this will be something more than a mistake they could have avoided._

_Later, they learn that she is in the hospital already._

_Even later than that, they learn that she has already boarded a plane and left them behind._

_And no matter how many times they pick up the phone, she is never any closer than that._

**xxx**

Dangerous words that sound like 'who are you?' and 'who are you working for?' slip from their lips.

And maybe, if she told them she did not know anymore, it would not have been a lie.

**xxx**

Zane sighs and sits.

"You already know that he - well, Agent Jones - called us down Mexico to have us go undercover against the terrorist group that killed Cooper."

Luke winces at the memory.

"But he didn't tell us at the time, that only one of us would actually be going," he pauses, "or the kind of undercover work he actually needed done."

The silence that follows is tense as Zane begins to pace.

"He called Luke and I one day, after we'd been down there about a month. Told us that he was sending Kensi undercover. Alone. We couldn't say anything until he called her himself, but he let us know that she was going in-"

"To be captured," Callen finishes the sentence softly. "It worked, didn't it."

It was not a question.

"She was in there for nearly four months before we could finally get a team organized to go in after her," Luke's voice is strained and he will not look at them. "We only saw her once after it all, while she was in the hospital. As soon as she was released, Jones sent her off to be reassigned. For her own protection."

"And now they've got Isaac and Kensi right where they want them." Sam's tone is clipped and angry, and he pulls out his cell phone immediately and turns away.

"What about Jones," Callen asks the two agents who have given them something to go on. "Where does he come in?"

Zane gives him a small shrug.

"Neither of us knows too much about him. We know that at some point, he was a spy within the camp Kensi was taken in to. When they realized he was selling them out, he just barely managed to escape, and spent the next few months setting up for our arrival."

"But Kensi knows him." Luke lifts his head from his chest for the first time since the conversation started. "I don't know how, and I don't know where from, but she knows him. Just like she's known about our betrayal since before she left us in Mexico, and just like she's known that she would end up running away from these men again someday."

**xxx**

_"What do you think I'm doing?" They have not been this close since the night that her old partners had arrived, and he is surprised at the hurt that flashes across her face at the question. "I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago. I'm protecting my family."_

"_I'm protecting my family."_

**xxx**

Callen's head falls heavily into his hands.

It was all suddenly so much more complicated.

**xxx**

"Do they know?" Isaac asks distantly from the driver's seat. Kensi shifts her focus from the passing scenery, and raises an eyebrow.

"What do you think?"

He laughs.

"Seeing as your two little watchdogs didn't bite my head off back in interrogation, I'd have to say no."

"Luke and Zane have every right to be angry with you."

"I'd say they have more of a reason to be angry with themselves. They've had plenty of opportunities to apologize, back in the hospital, and since they've gotten to LA you know."

"So have you."

His grip on the steering wheel tightens, but he does not deny it. Turning her attention back out the window, she closes her eyes and pretends that things have not always been this way between them. And it does not help that she cannot quite remember far back enough to say.

"I never wanted you to be dragged into this Kenz."

She smiles at the lie, but does not call him out on it just yet.

They both knew they would end up here eventually.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Reposted on December 7, 2010**

**I'm so sorry to keep you all waiting, here's a short update, and I sincerely hope to finish this story soon!  
****Thank you so much for your patience.**

**Disclaimer in Chapter One.**

**

* * *

**

Isaac parks the car in a deserted lot, three blocks from the pier. Neither of them have the strength to move.

"Are they waiting for us?" Eyes still focused on something outside her window. He knows that she is scanning for the glint of sniper rifles, and he also knows that the action is more routine than a result of nerves.

"More than likely."

Individually, they have been watched.

Together, they are hunted.

"Your friends won't be far behind."

She turns back to face him at the statement.

Silence stretches on between them, and Kensi sighs. She knows what he means.

"I'm not planning on dying tonight Isaac."

"I'm not sure you have much of a choice anymore."

His words sting, false hopes have no place in these kinds of situations, and they will always disagree.

"I told Callen I was protecting my family." Isaac narrows his eyes in confusion and she will not look at him again. "And if I die tonight," her eyes catch movement outside the car and she pauses.

"If I die tonight, I am under no illusion that they will let this case rest at that."

He swallows heavily, because the last thing anyone needs is a government agency tracking down this group again. The pain it causes and the losses that never quite die away completely, and he is done pushing that onto anyone else.

"Protecting your family, huh?" There has always been more than one type of family. The tension that has built, and is pushing on the walls around his heart. She smiles tentatively.

"We may have a lot of ghosts we'll never quite overcome, Isaac," suicide missions, missed birthdays, foster homes and funerals.

"But you're still my brother."

He is silent, and she opens her car door, letting the cool night air rush in.

"Let's go."

**xxx**

_She still dreams of it sometimes._

_The solid crunch of gravel as she is dragged into their dirty building for the first time. The faint prick of a needle and the rush of air that greets her as she falls limply to the floor. Whispers become angry screeches. She picks up rocks and skips them on water that does not exist._

_Closets that will not close. Neighbors that do not answer the when she calls. Sons that never come home and daughters who never write back._

_When she said nothing (all the times she said nothing). When there was everything to say and it might have all been a lie._

_When there was a brother who she did not know well enough to hate sent her to die for his own selfish cause._

_When she lived to see the regret in his eyes and did not feel sorry for herself._

_Gentle tugs on her heart._

_Blood that pools out and is not yours._

_She wins only because she did not lose._

_And has been dying for a very long time._

**xxx**

"G, you coming?" Sam's voice filters through his thoughts, shaking him out of his daze.

"Whe-"

"Back to OPS." He gives a small laugh at his friend's confusion. "Don't think for a second I didn't know you weren't listening."

Callen remembers sitting on her couch and picking up a folder that told him a story he did not want to hear.

**xxx**

_The pictures of a girl he thought he knew start looking black and blue, dead and empty, bloody and limp, he cannot breathe just right._

**xxx**

Zane and Luke have started this and Isaac will end it and they are running behind a schedule they have not yet made.

They leave the boathouse behind.

They leave a lot of things behind.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**I won't bore you with all my excuses for not posting this sooner. Thank you to everyone that has waited for patiently for this chapter. There's probably only one or two more before this story is over, so I hope you'll stick around to see how it ends. **

**Happy Holidays everyone!**

Disclaimer in Chapter One

**xxx**

The boards that make up the wooden dock creak impatiently under her feet as she and Isaac near the water.

There was never any use in hiding.

So they wait.

**xxx**

"Tell me you have something Eric," Sam is impatient, and Eric's furrowed brow does nothing to reassure him that they're on the right track.

"I've been searching through Kensi's personal records since you left the boathouse," he explains, "and on the surface, everything seems to be pretty standard. But take a look at this." He slides another picture into the center of the screen. "This is her first personnel file. The one that we have on record is a write-over."

Callen recognizes the information on the screen as the information in her apartment.

"The last case recorded here is the dealing in Mexico City," Sam observes.

"What was so important about that case that it merits an entirely new personal record?" Nate taps his chin with his index finger and squints at the screen.

"Maybe it has something to do with the reason she was requested for the mission in the first place." Luke's voice interrupts their musings.

"Look, Zane and I might have kept it a secret that she was basically running into a trap, but that doesn't mean she didn't find out from someone else." He shakes his head. "It's like I said before, Kensi and Isaac know each other from somewhere other than this case. Maybe not well, and they may not care much for one another, but they're not strangers. There's a reason he chose her over Zane and I."

"It's probably no coincidence that Isaac Jones doesn't exist either," Eric's fingers are fast at work on the keyboard, scrolling through backlogs of cases. "The Agent in charge of sending Kensi in is Agent-"

"Agent Blye." Callen reads the name off the screen in a sort of daze, because Kensi's words suddenly mean something entirely different. "When she said that she was protecting her family, she wasn't just talking about us."

Zane leans forward, eyes narrowed.

"Isaac was a spy in their camp long before we were transferred. It was only when they realized that he was playing them that they needed a team in Mexico City."

"So he sends in his own sister as payment, hoping it'll cover his own life." Sam shakes his head in disgust.

"Them torturing her was just another way of biding their time," Luke is almost whispering now, the confusion leaving his eyes. "They'd have killed her eventually, even if she hadn't told them where he was."

"She's only of interest now because she managed to escape."

Silence falls after Nate's words.

"Wait a second," Eric begins typing again, as if something has just struck him. "Kensi's cell phone, it's still online."

They're moving out of the room before he's done speaking.

"Send us the location Eric, and keep Hetty posted."

Callen's words are sharp and he moves quickly ahead of the others.

All of them hoping that they won't be too late to make a difference.

**xxx**

Footsteps behind them draw nearer and nearer, and Isaac turns around slowly to greet them. She focuses steadily on the ocean before her, stormy and gray. Once upon a time, she had withered away in the desert. The thought of bleeding out beside the sea is not any more heroic or worthy, and she tightens her grip on her weapon.

"Agent Blye," The voice is gravely and almost amused. "It has been far too long."

Isaac laughs a hollow laugh.

"It could have been longer, if Petty Officer Cooper wasn't found dead in his study."

"A regrettable loss," another man replies smoothly, and Kensi knows that the loss was anything but that. Taking a shallow breath, she turns to face them as well.

_xxx_

_And he does not say that no one is coming and he does not say that the shrieks at night are from dying prisoners just like her. He does not need to tell her that she has long outlived her stay for her to feel it in her hollow chest._

_xxx_

"You were an admirable prisoner." Her gaze flickers over towards the voice. A man with a dark beard and cheeks covered in countless scars. She wishes she could remember which one of these men belonged to which terrible deed, but they have all blurred together into four months of never-ending pain.

"Go to hell," she bites back.

She told her brother that she was not going to die tonight.

Now she thinks that she might do just that, if she can take these men down with her.

His eyes are taunting her now.

_Do you still wake up shaking? Does your back still burn from the crack of a whip, the rush of chemicals through your veins and the shackles that bound your wrists to a crumbling brick wall? Those terrible days that became nothing more than a continuous plea for death. Oh, how you wanted to die._

One of them draws a gun, and they hear its faint click. There are three men before her, and she knows that there must be more somewhere beyond the dock.

"Every chase must end." The third man says softly.

Isaac draws his weapon out as well.

"We'll see about that."

**xxx**

Sam slams on the brakes as soon as the concrete turns into sand. Callen and Luke are out of the car before it stops moving, Zane not too far behind.

"Her signal is just up ahead," Luke breathes.

Callen nods, "On the dock."

"Sam, you and Zane check the perimeter. Check for any men that they're using as back up."

"Be careful G," Sam warns. He and Zane slip away into the darkness.

They approach the dock quickly, hidden by the clouds that have begun moving in. There's no doubt in either of their minds that it will rain soon.

Faintly, Callen can make out five figures at the edge of the pier, and the glint of a metal gun. He and Luke crouch down, watching.

"When do we move?" Luke murmurs.

And when fire erupts from somewhere within the five, he has his answer.

Two figures fall almost instantly.

And suddenly, they are running.

Callen's feet cannot carry him fast enough across the planks. And as the first drops of rain are released from the sky, he cannot breathe just right until he knows that she is not one of the fallen.

The bullets stop flying, and the only sound he hears is the pounding of his feet.

There's another click of a gun off to his right, and he freezes, raising his own weapon towards his attacker.

"Kensi," he whispers, as Luke joins him.

She lets out a shuddering breath and drops her gun.

The blood that has stained her shirt leaves his heart crooked and aching.

Luke calls an ambulance.

They are suspended in a second of time that they cannot fix.


End file.
